At the moment I first saw Angus Jones I was taking my ease on Funchal beach. I lay by an upturned market boat, careful to keep even my feet in the shade. This is a prime precaution when you wear three toes leaking through either shoe and you live under a sun that burns like the white hot spot in a crown sheet. It was breathless noon. The waves came marching in to hiss on the basalt cobbles. Nevertheless and after a manner I was taking my ease, the only thing I was still free to take in all Madeira and the last thing I shall ever give up anywhere.
Off the one quay lay a rusted tramp with the lines of a wash boiler and the flag of Siam—of all tropic flags—hanging over her stern like a dishrag to a nail. With shoutings a half-naked crew hauled bags and crates out of her into shore boats. Her decks were a litter of teak beams, ill-stowed. She carried a sloven list that brought her port chains under, and she shouldered at her anchor like a drunken man at a post. Moreover, the reek of her was an offense along the water front.
And yet I desired her, with all her untidiness, her filth, her unseemly violence of activity, for presently when her cargo was out she would stagger off the roadstead as she had come and bear away for some other port—any other port. Happy ship that could be free to head up into the world again. Happy souls aboard who should leave the black beach of Funchal behind them! And so I lay and watched and enviedher and them, admonishing sand hoppers between whiles.
"Do you chance to have the loan of a match about you?"...
I sat up the better to stare. The stranger stood all of seven feet, it seemed to me, built like a lath, hung around and about with the wreck of tweeds. But what struck me was his headgear. He wore one of those wool caps, half an inch thick, with which an inscrutable Providence has moved the peasantry of this blistering isle to inflict themselves. He had the ear flaps down. It made me sweat again to see him. But he seemed amazingly cool. And so indeed he was, for this was Angus Jones.
"Do you find yourself in need of a fire?" I asked.
"It's for a light to my pipe."
"I'd rather not disturb myself," I told him, "but a smoke is an inducement. If the tobacco is worth it, I can probably raise a match or two from some fisherman."
"Rest yourself again," he said, observing me with interest. "I see you are a man of judgment.... It was my idea if I could beg a match I could also beg the rest."
So we reclined in the shade together, Angus Jones and I, and conversed in the liberal fashion of our calling.
"I am newly come from over yon." He hooked a thumb toward the mountains that wall the almost unknown North Coast. "The cheese from ewes is sustaining but monotonous. The people are of an incredible simplicity. They talk pure Portuguese of the fourteenth century, and they count on their fingers."
"You should have stayed there," I made answer. "The people here are sophisticated by tourists and poverty. Also cheese is superior to cactus fruit, and from sugar cane one turns at last with loathing."
"Do you work for it?"
I was long since lost to shame. I confessed how I ballyhooed at the door of an embroidery shop whenever a ship loosed English passengers for a two-hour visit.
"Not good enough," decided Angus Jones. "Though, mark you, I should never admit a town of this size to be as barren as you say. Still I am fed up with Madeira. I am disappointed in Madeira. Is it believable, after my stay of a month, I have yet to meet the famous wine of the name on its native heath?"
"Quite, since it does not exist. You could have met only an inferior imported Malaga with a fake label."
"Can such things be?" asked Jones, with an expression of pain.
"Oh, it's all a fraud. Like the coasters from the Monte that have to be shoved, and the embroidery, which is cheaper in Paris, and the beggars, who are the only wealthy citizens by escaping the taxes."
He considered.
"I think I shall not stay. Tell me, how does a lad like you or me set about getting away from Madeira?"
"How much money have you?"
"As much as a gentleman needs."
"Not good enough," I echoed. "This is the one place in the world you cannot leave without paying for the privilege."
He looked down on my bitterness from between his ear flaps.
"Man," he said, "when dealing with people of a racial simplicity, never talk of paying. 'Tis in the nature of the lesser nationalities to bear the white man as a burden."
And I laughed. It was a blessing to laugh. I thought I had forgotten how.
"Tell me that after a month in Funchal," I said."I will teach you a new way of cooking cactus and how to steal sugar cane when the moon is full."
He regarded me solemnly and shook his head.
"How long have you been here?"
"So long I would surely slip on my ear if I should ever again walk on anything but cobbles."
"'Tis living among these islanders has taught you such simplicity. Mark me. For two days I have not eaten. I require food, liquor, and to be helped on my way. Your case is much the same, I take it. Good. Now I say—I, Angus Jones—that all these things shall be procured for the two of us.... Come, and let me restore your faith."
For the sake of the jest I bestirred myself and went with him, well knowing what he would find. We climbed to the deserted Rua Da Praia, past the red stone tower that is known as Benger's Folly, and in a cave-like office under the blue arms of the South American Line we approached its greasy little agent....
"Passige? Passige? Maybeso. Sometimes iss a trimmer or two dead coming up from Rio und they need a man to Hamburg. Only you must shovel coal all day and night. Ha, ha! How will you like that? Show me anyways your exit receipt und I will take down the names."
"My which?" asked Angus Jones.
"Have you not paid your exit, to the customs?"
"I propose to take my exit, not pay it," said Angus Jones.
"Ha, ha. But first, my friend, you must pay. Naturally you get no wages for a passige, therefore We cannot advance it."
"But why should—"
The agent waved his arms and faded in the cave.
"I am busy," said he, "Va-se'mbora!"
We proceeded along the rua to the sign of the Elder-Dempsters....
"To ship?" A bilious Anglo-Portuguese behind the desk eyed us up and down. "Would a captain's cabin at forty pounds suit you?"
"Thanks," said Angus Jones. "I'll consider it. But in the meanwhile—"
"Have you paid the Government tax?"
"I am unable—"
"Enough," snapped the Anglo-Portuguese. "Va-se'mbora!"....
At the Booth Line agency we encountered a lank gentleman with a languid smile who further enlightened Angus Jones.
"Take on hands at Madeira? You're crazy. Do you suppose we want the port closed to us for shipping monarchist suspects? They always head for Brazil, and we're watched every minute."
"I am not a monarchist, nor yet a suspect," said Angus Jones.
"You're the only man around here who can say so. A word of advice. Go straight to thealfandegaand pay your tax. If any one hears you're trying to get away without squaring yourself with the authorities, you'll more likely get a free passage to jail."
"Sir—!"
"And I'll ask you kindly not to hang about my place. Now, I've done my best for you.Va-se'mbora!"
In the street Angus Jones deigned to question me.
"What is this unlucky tax?"
"It is levied on every one who chooses to export himself from these salubrious shores," I explained. "It is a matter of five hundred reis."
That brought him to a dead halt in his tracks.
"How did you thrive in the mountains?" I was moved to ask.
"Moderately, as a corn doctor. It is their simplecustom to wear shoes three sizes too small. The only drawback was the absence of currency. When I came to collect, what was my grief to find they still rely on barter and exchange."
"Then you will be relieved to hear, possibly, that five hundred reis is no more than half a dollar."
"The simplicity of them!" cried Angus Jones. "Do you know, it is a relief. And yet, it scarce betters us, for he who lacks the penny also lacks the pound.
"However, we will concede the point of departure, temporarily. Remains the populace, the great and generous heart that animates the bosom of the native race. What is a steamship agent?... Man, he also is a stranger living on their simplicity."
We turned into a maze of cobbled ways behind the market, passing between rows of shuttered shops. It was the offseason, and in this midday hour the city dozed.
"Here should be the local version of a delicatessen," said Angus Jones before the store of Joao Gomez. We entered where Joao sat intrenched amid sugar loaves and tinned goods and silvered sausages, beneath a flock of lard balloons no rounder nor shinier than his face.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I hope you are quite well. I hope all your family are quite well. Behold in me, sir, a learned medico recently come from London with healing for these islands. Any and all ills to which flesh is heir are banished by a certain marvelous drug of which I am the happy possessor. Have you boils, fever, gangrene, distemper? Do you sneeze, palpitate, or feel pain in sinciput or occiput, tibia, diaphragm or appendix? Are you subject to measles, dropsy, pyromania, or falling arch?"
Joao Gomez had opened one eye far enough to envisage the eloquent intruder and to locate his broom.
"Va-se'mbora!" quoth Joao, and we were eager so to do, for the broom was the ancient kind made of switches, and it stung....
"Note the error in style," said Angus Jones with a slight frown. "My context is too sauced and savored. I must mend it. A crisper brevity serves our need with such simple people."
At the bazaar where Martinho Agostinho Sousa sold stamps, liquors, basketware, and curios of many sorts to the marauding tourist we reconnoitered.
"I like the name," declared Angus Jones. "There is a wistful dampness about it. That Agostinho, now. What piquant promise! And Sousa—if pronounced in the simplest manner. Can this be an omen?"
Martinho was within and welcomed us with purrings and graceful gestures.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I see you deal in many things fine and rare. I have here an article which I am forced to sell for a shade of its value. You can make a thousand per cent profit from the first collector. Give me a dollar and call it square."...
He opened a thin wallet and laid on the counter a faded internal-revenue stamp such as seals a packet of tobacco in a happier land. Martinho looked at it and from it to Angus Jones, and his suavity departed from him.
"What t' Sam Hill you take me for? And me that run a gin mill in Lawrence, Mass.! Do I look like a fall guy?... Beat it, you long-legged hobo! On your way!"
Thus he pursued us with rude outcry, but at the end lapsed and blew us along with a final vernacular blast: "Va-se'mbora!"
We arrived with speed at the Praca da Constituicao,the main square. Angus Jones was somewhat winded but unsubdued.
"How could I know a wretched exile had returned to contaminate the soil with foreign vulgarity?" he inquired. "Give me a native institution."
Then with an evil humor I pointed out to him the Golden Gate, hospitably open to all vagrant airs that stirred among the plane trees.
"That is the social heart and center of Funchal," I told him, quite truly.
The hairy and muscular proprietor of the Golden Gate was nodding over the great porcelain handles of his beer pumps like a switchman in his tower.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I see you have no billiard marker. 'Tis a great pity, but soon mended."
The proprietor rolled out with a formidable roar, rubbing his eyes.
"Pedro, my glasses!Billiar'? On the minute, mos' honorable sir. How stupid am I that a ship should be in and I catched in a sleeping! We have a ver' fine table of billiar', French or English, if you please should look.Pedro, my glasses!Is it a Castle Liner you arrive by, mos' honorable? Will you have beer or wheesky-sod'?" He bobbed and leered, blind as an owl. I might have warned Angus Jones, but I did not. I only stood where I had a clear space to the door.
"All in good time," said Angus Jones. "I speak of a marker. In billiards, if you mark me, the marking is a proper art. Now, there I meet you as an expert. Give me charge of your billiard room, and I'll double your business."
"Billiar'? Yes, yes; only wait.... Pedro!"
Pedro appeared as from a trap, with a pair of spectacles.
"Do I get the job?" asked Angus Jones.
"Jobe!" exclaimed the proprietor. "What jobe?" He put on his glasses and eyed the applicant up and down. "Ah-h-h! You wish—? ... What is here?" he bellowed, and fell back on his bar.
"I seek a place as billiard marker," said Angus Jones.
"Sagrada Familia!Pig spy of a monarchist!"
The Portuguese equivalent of bungstarter whiffed Angus Jones by an eyelash. The rafters shook. We had a start to the door, and needed it. Jones cleared the sill with the aid of a ponderous foot. In the driving hail of oaths and beer mugs we tore across the Praca. A little soldier in blue linen started up from, somewhere. Two others ran out of a doorway. A crippled beggar threw his crutch at us with a curse. Loungers, ragamuffins, street cars, joined the chase with clamorous glee as we turned up an alley. All Funchal joined in the chorus behind us.
"Va-se'mbora! Va-se'mbora!"
And so consigned we fled at last to safety among suburban gardens and burst panting through a cane brake.
I said nothing to Angus Jones. Comment was too obvious. Angus Jones said nothing to me. Comment was inadequate. But I made such amends as lay with me. At a little change house by the sugar fields I spent my one coin for a bottle of wine. The wink and gasp of Angus Jones as that flagrant vintage seared his throat ended the gentle jape as far as I was concerned. He knew more about Madeira now and he no longer condescended to me....
We regained the water front by a devious route and came down toward the quay among odorous fishing smacks and tangled nets. Hotter, more desolate than ever, lay that black griddle of the foreshore on which Angus Jones was now condemned to wander with me.Nothing moved along its pebbly waste but heat waves and boiling surf and hopping insects in clouds.
Off the jetty lay the Siamese tramp, still heaving in the ground swell, and we came down to the edge to stare across at her. As pariahs before a vision of paradise we stood and yearned toward that disreputable hulk.
They had almost finished with her cargo. At this moment they held a clumsy crate balanced over the side in a sling, seeking to lower it upon a shore boat about the size of a dinghy. The crew swarmed like furious ants, and a white officer in dirty ducks flailed amid the riot. As the chain swung we saw the crate was really a clumsy cage in which ramped a huge and tawny form.
"The circus," I murmured.
"Ha!" said Angus Jones.
"Not the kind of circus you mean," I assured him. "No clowns, no rings, no shell games. It's a kind of fifth-class traveling menagerie, from what I hear, backed as a new venture by his excellency the governor himself. They'll house it in that round barn up the promenade where the cinema lives, and anon those natives who have the price will sit around on the benches and tremble and scratch themselves."
"But why should it be thus?" asked Angus Jones.
"Well, those who carry fleas—"
"No, but why should they tremble?"
"This is a far island. No one hereabouts has ever seen any animals more savage than a goat."
"True," said Angus Jones, with a grimace as if he had bitten into a sour fruit. "It is their simplicity. I had almost forgot."
Strange that he should have taken the word in defeat and disillusionment at that moment, for just then the thing happened. There burst a shrill screaming from the tramp, and its knot of toilers flew apart like bitsof a bomb. Men leaped into the rigging, climbed the spars, shot down the hatchways. The hanging cage sagged and cracked, and overside flashed, with an arching spring, some great body all lithe and tawny in the sunlight. It plunged, and presently reappeared, surging for shore.
I felt suddenly conspicuous on that beach. We stood far from shelter. Nor are cobbles good to run upon....
"I think we'd better be going," I suggested, and caught sight of my companion, and stopped.
He still wore his wool cap, and it occurred to me even then that he had not turned a hair throughout our flight. But now his face was curiously splotched red and white and his eyes blazed seaward in fixity. He did not budge.
"Tell me," said Angus Jones—"tell me what was that word with which they harried us a while back? I seemed to spy a meaning. The one word they had for us alike?"
"Va-se'mbora?" I said, fidgeting. "Oh, it's the common repulse to beggars and nuisances. You say it when you want to be rid of some one.Va-se'mbora!Which means in the vernacular: Chase yourself."
"Chase yourself," repeated Angus Jones softly. "Think of that now! They seek to tax us. They refuse us dole. They beat us here and yon. They will not let us go, though we would only leave their country for their country's good.... Withal they tell us: Chase yourself! And they are, as you say, a simple people, living on a far island."
The tawny head was close in.
"It's time to move," I urged.
But Angus Jones picked up an oar and cut the painter from a fishing boat and went down to the water's edge. He made a singular figure on Funchal beach, drawn to all his lean height, with the clothesflapping on him as he struck a noble pose. For myself I retreated among the boats where I might hide in some cuddy.
"Observe the epic grandeur of the scene," declaimed Angus Jones. "Here I stand on a rock in mid-Atlantic to meet the raging monarch of the midmost jungle. 'Tis lofty, incredible—in a sense, miraculous."
The man was mad.... I called to him again.
"For Heaven's sake, come away!"
But Angus Jones smiled out over the blue bay.
"As if St. Patrick were to welcome a sea serpent in the dales of Wexford!" he added, raising his oar.
And there crawled out of the wash at his feet a full-grown male lion, gaunt and sopping, with crimson jaws distended....
From afar among the fishing boats I thought many things very swiftly: that I must close my eyes tight against the cruel, bright Madeira sun and what it would show—this for one; that I should never again feed crude Malaga to a man with an empty stomach—for another; that perhaps the animal might be somewhat assuaged with the sea water, and finally that here, after all, was a miracle, as he had said.
For quite surely I saw Angus Jones fetch the jungle monarch but the one wallop with his oar.
"Down!" thundered Angus Jones.
The lion snarled, spat, crouched—and began to shake its paws in the air and to lick its fur like any prowler of the back fence, all forlorn and bedraggled.
"Kitty, kitty!" said Angus Jones....
The lion blinked up at him. He stooped and tickled it between the ears. When he stood up again the rope was noosed about its neck, and the other end of the rope was in his hand. He hailed me to stand forth, and I obeyed in fear and great wonder.
A Rex Ingram Metro Picture.A Rex Ingram—Metro Picture.Where the Pavement Ends.A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.
"Do you see me?" said Angus Jones. "I am comeof the dominant race. Do you see my cat? It is the proper pet for such a man. And now—" He drew a long breath through his nose. "And now we will resume our investigations amid the haunts of these simple islanders."
So we turned back and made our second entrance into Funchal—Angus Jones and I—and the lion on a leading string. It was stupendous, and yet it went simply enough. Our progress was slow because Thomas—Angus declared his name was Thomas—had to sit down every few feet and wash his feet or his face or some part of him. He seemed a well-mannered and an amiable beast. But he was a fearsome thing to look upon, striding up the peaceful rua, and I took no part when Angus Jones yanked him along.
We called first at the shop of Joao Gomez. There was evidence that Joao had departed by the back way within the moment. But if he stood not upon his going we made even less of it. Those sausages in silver foil were the true fruit of Bologna, ripe and spicy, and there were chocolates, and dainty biscuits in tins, pickled mussels and Logos figs, anchovies and raisins and hams, real Estremadura, known to song and story. Such delights an epicure might have grudged us, but no epicure ever brought the sharp tooth shared by us three. For three at the feast we were. Angus Jones herded the lion into a corner and fed him with a ham, and he was grateful and made about two bites of it.
"Thomas," said Angus Jones, "I see your grievance is like our own—grown up among whips and scorns. Lay on, my son. 'Tis the day of triumph." And his eye was bright like a china button.
"Can you hold him to it?" I asked as we sat in the ruins of João's stock.
"Who? Thomas? He also has played a part on many stages. Do you note the scars on his poorribs? He may even have known me, myself. Hold!"
He caught up a leather thong and cracked it like a whip. The lion spat, but rather like puss at the fireside. His great yellow eyes blinked mildly and the lines about them were lines of worry, very pathetic to see, and his chin whiskers waggled. "Don't be hard on him," I begged.
"Stand there!" cried Angus Jones.
The beast reared meekly on his haunches and stayed so until permitted to drop. Angus Jones waved a ham bone and spoke with emotion.
"They accused us as monarchists. Their only mistake was that we are kings. And here is another royalty who shall enter upon his own this tide. Royal shall be our portion. Come, friends, once more into the breach of hospitality, and we'll teach these yellow simps who they've been entertaining unawares. Come where glory waits!"
We went forth into Funchal, and before our steps as we moved it might have been a city of the dead, but further about it seethed. No one crossed our path, and every house was barred and bolted where we passed, but only just in time. There was a scuttling, a screaming, and a terror in the air, a slamming of doors and windows, a crying upon saints and small children. Ox sleds stampeded in the next square. A flock of goats climbed a garden wall ahead of us. Dogs and boys went heeling it up every alley, and people swept past the street ends in a froth of white faces. Even church bells began to chatter and toll as for a pestilence.
Through all we paced in stately procession, slowly, munching in content, and Thomas with a skittish wreath of sausages round his neck, so that I know not what chance kept the alarm from reaching our newacquaintance until the very instant of our entrance into his bazaar—where there was no back door. The drop of his jaw, his squeal as he climbed the shelves against an avalanche of bottles and demijohns, his frantic perch among the basketwork—these were rare tribute....
"Are you there, old dear, late of Lawrence, Mass.?" inquired Angus Jones. "The drinks are on us. What will you have, Martini Angostura de Souse?"
Thomas was somewhat curious of Martinho and sat him down in the midst of the shop. Here he yawned upward chastely, and the quaking of Martinho made the glassware dance.
"Don't let that thing loose!" begged the liquor dealer. And indeed Thomas as an indoor spectacle was paralyzing.
Angus Jones kept the rope taut as if by his single effort the ravening beast was alone restrained.
"We would not so hastily deprive ourselves of you," he said. "We require you to name the drink. 'Tis no light matter. We want the best in the house. The best, mind you. And if you do not wholly suit us, I bid ye beware!"
Martinho writhed, but he was not long deciding. He took no chances with that red pit of a mouth below him. At his direction I drew forth the cobwebbed flasks, and even in the act he groaned aloud. For this was his treasure.... No import, but genuine liquid gold of the soil, the kind that once gave Madeira such great honor. It bore the magic brand Malvasia, under date of '57, and truly it was the drink of the gods, smooth as honey and sweet as a nut.
Angus Jones let it trickle slowly over his palate and reverently read the faded label, and it was as if a holy balm had spread upon his wounds.
"Sir, I thank you," he said, hushed and solemn. "Sir, you have a thirsty name I shall long remember.For now I perceive a great truth—that no title is given wholly in vain. Thus at last we find the good of Madeira, though extracted before your time."
It was no sample we took with us; we added the whole basket of that precious wine to our loot when we bade farewell to Martinho and left him babbling on his shelf....
And here I have recorded the true culmination of our great adventure. What comes after remains dimmed and mellowed, tinged with joy and also with a tender sadness, consecrate to a fragrant and incomparable memory. I know that we came forth from Sousa's in undisputed possession of all Funchal. I know that we advanced as conquerors through theruas,calcadesandpasseiosthat had witnessed our discomfiture. I know that as we entered the Praca da Constituicao a mighty shout went up, and that when we paraded the great plaza from end to end its roofs were black with spectators, but no man set foot to ground within sight of us. These things seemed then but trifles, the natural incident to such a pilgrimage as we made together, we celebrities, now four in number—Angus Jones, and I, and Thomas, and the basket of Malvasia, '57.
It must have been about the end of the second bottle that we hunted mine hairy host of the Golden Gate through all the rooms of his barracks and smoked his Teneriffe cigars at one thousand reis, and made him play billiards with three oranges while we marked the count upon his rear with cues. He was a vile shot, I remembered, so we took to recording his misses, and Angus Jones said this was the most wonderful system of marking ever invented, and taught him free of all charge. I was greatly moved at the generosity of Jones in this matter and embraced him. It seemed to bespeak so grand and forgiving a character.
The fourth bottle had probably been broached by the time we raided the Commercial Association and flushed three steamship agents. One we set to shoveling coal on the public highway and the other two marched around him singing the monarchist anthem—I was the prompter in that piece. I have an idea it was a success, for the roofs passed the word, and we could hear them howling half a mile back. They do not like the monarchist anthem in Funchal.
Certainly the basket was quite light when parley was called at last. This historic event took place under the high stone tower that is known as Benger's Folly where certain eminent citizens had taken refuge, and I have reason to think the overtures came from no less a person than his excellency the governor himself. "What do we want?" echoed Angus Jones in reply to that hail. "What do we want?"
He leaned ever so slightly on the massive shoulder of Thomas—I was in support with the basket—and let a voluptuous eye run from end to end of the water front. So the Spanish conquistador may have looked who took the place in the sixteenth century. And so he had a right to look on subject territory.
"We are fed; we have drunk—gloriously have we drunk," said Angus Jones. "Honor is now restored, and to these people the conviction of their native and essential shim—sim, pardon me, simplishity." He waved a hand. "We require to be helped on our way. For cabin passage in yonder vessel, tax free and duly paid, we will remit the rest. Let it be peach," said Angus Jones. "Yes, let us have peash!"
And as he said so it was.
I have a vague recollection of seeing Thomas behind his bars again somewhere and of parting from him, with tears, I think; then of the rusted side of a ship and its blessed planks under my feet—for a time.One last picture lingers ere all dissolves....
They were even then hoisting anchor aboard our Siamese tramp, but the vessel had swung her stern shoreward not fifty feet off the quay. Angus Jones stood alone by the taffrail in full view of the stricken throng which had flocked down to quay and beach and promenade to see us go. He stood alone, that marvelous man, holding the last bottle of Malvasia sweetly cradled in an arm, and he harangued the multitude. He gave a dissertation upon Madeira, I believe, its men, manners, and morals. What he said is lost to fame, though doubtless it was pithy and pointed. But I remember his climax, and that was nothing short of inspired. He flung abroad a magnificent gesture.
"Va-se'mbora!" thundered Angus Jones in the face of the populace. "Va-se'mbora!"—Which means in the vernacular: Chase yourself!...
A naturalist, by what Andrew Harben told me, is a man that goes around looking for things that happen by nature. The more natural they are the better pleased is he. And some day if he looks far enough he's liable to fetch up against something that just naturally makes a meal off him and he goes looking no farther.
Anyway this is what I gathered from Andrew Harben. He's all right now and when last I saw him he was pounding chain cables by the Cape Town breakwater—such being the most denatured employment he could find. But he used to be a naturalist himself and interested in most curious facts like bugs and poison plants and wild animals, until once they brought him so close to an unnatural finish that they cured him for all time to come....
"Keep away from it," says Andrew Harben, giving me advice while he chipped the rust flakes lovingly into my eyes. "Whenever you have a feeling that you'd like to be a great scientific investigator and discover what's none of your business," he says, "go and pry into a keg of dynamite with a chisel. It's quicker and more homelike. But leave the strange places and the strange secrets of the earth to university professors and magazine writers, they being poor devils and mostly so scrawny that nothing would bite them anyway. You mightn't believe I once went around sampling rocks and fleabites and tribal customs and things in all kinds of queer corners. I did, 'he says,' but I do not any more. And yet I made one remarkable scientific discovery before I quit. It is a valuable fact in nature and I will hand it to you for what it's worth, free gratis."
Which he did, and I'm doing the same.
It was while his ambition was young and strong that Andrew Harben took a job from the Batavia Government to watch a screw-pile light by the Borneo shore of Macassar. His tastes running as they did, you got to admit his judgment, no other place around the earth having quite so much nature laid on it to the square inch. Mud and mangroves and sloughs and swamps make a cozy home that suits a lot of queer inhabitants, mostly of a kind you and me would be highly wishful to avoid. But Andrew Harben he opened up his specimen cases and set out his little pickle bottles full of alcohol and was happy, laughing quite humorous to himself at the idea of getting paid thirty guilders a month for such a privilege.
The lantern at Andrew Harben's light must have been brought out by the first Dutch navigator. A great iron scaffolding in the middle of his shack held a tub of oil. Then there were eight flat wicks that led up through a perforated sheet of iron from the oil tub, each cropping out overhead by an old-fashioned thumbscrew feed. And around the wicks was built the eight-sided glass cupola. Yes, it was a kind of overgrown street lamp of a light, but mighty important in those waters just the same.
The keeper's business was to have the oil tub always full and to climb around and give the thumb-screws a twist every hour of the night. So long as he kept his wicks trimmed and burning nobody cared what else he did on the side. The skipper of the lighthouse tender that landed Andrew Harben made this clear.
"Z' last mans what lived here got eats by z' crocodile," he said. "All but z' feets of one, which we buried. Zat wass awright, only zey let z' lights go out and zere wass wrecks. Oh, such wrecks because of zese dam currents. Now, please, if you got mad,be so good to stay anyways by z' lights until we bring anozzer mans, if it is all z' same to you."
"Don't worry about me," said Andrew Harben, who was a big, hearty chap. "I shan't go mad, no fear. The poor fools probably hadn't enough brains to keep from rattling loose. You see, I'm a scientist, I shall explore the wonders of natural history. My work here in Borneo shall make me famous and, who knows, may make my fortune as well. There was Philson, who found how the nipa palm can be made to yield pure maple sirup at a cost of one cent per gallon, and Biggins, who learned that the distilled juice of the female mustard spider is a specific for the pip—both humble investigators like myself. No. I'll have enough to keep me busy, never fret."
"Yes," remarked the skipper, a most intelligent halfcaste, Andrew Harben told me, being educated at the Agricultural School at Buitenzorg, "yes, I zink maybe you will. So you are a natural 'istory? In zat case a crocodile may not like your flavior, you zink? Perhaps you are right. I will stop back in a month to see if zis iss z' truth?"
"How many men have held this job?" asked Andrew Harben.
"Oh, I 'ave forgot 'ow many," said the skipper, with a face like wood, which is the custom of half-castes when they lie.
Andrew Harben might have lived ashore if he'd wanted, because there was a plank walk set on steel screw piles that led from the lighthouse right into the mangroves. But he preferred the idea of sitting out there in the evenings to watch the monkeys and the crabs play along the mud flats by the river mouth. This shack was his box seat.
He was so took up with getting settled in the new roost that he never thought to overhaul his suppliestill the skipper was gone. Grub and oil were all right, he found, but one thing was all wrong. Those eight wicks that fed the lights had been used up short. Even when he filled the tub level he hadn't more than an inch to spare all around. And there wasn't an extra wick in the place.
Andrew Harben ran out and yelled at the tender that was just heading up for Mangkalihat, but he couldn't make them hear, and the skipper thought he was only passing compliments.
So he was, in a way, being sore. This thing about the wicks was just blamed carelessness on the part of the three Dutch marines who had held the place temporary to his arrival. Also it was likely to prove expensive to shipping and a lot of trouble to him. "How the devil can I keep those footy little lights going for a month without no wicks?" said Andrew Harben.
The more he looked and thought the less he liked it. Macassar is a regular crossroads. Junks from Kwangchow toddle by after sandalwood and birds' nests, and country wallahs go smelling their way—and smelling is right—around to Banjermasin after benzoin and rice, and tramps of all breeds with Australian coal and ironwood, and topsail schooners with anything at all from pepper to dead Chinamen—a parade like Collins Street of an afternoon.
Andrew Harben considered, and he saw what a mess he would start thereabout if he ever let his lights go out. It made him peevish, because he hadn't come to be bothered with such matters, and he started to piece out those wicks. All he could find in the way of stuff was his socks. He tied them on to the loose ends of the wicks, and they drew oil all right, but he only had six, being a frugal man in his habits. Not another thing could he rummage up around the shack to help him, no yarn, nor twine, nor goods of any kind.
"Shall we be stuck by such naturalistic obstacles?" said Andrew Harden, and he took his pants, which were canvas, and hacked them with a knife. By raveling off about four inches from each leg he got enough cotton thread to patch the other two wicks with. It left him kind of high-watered, you might say. Yes, he was well ventilated around his ankles, and not having any more socks to his feet he was going to be quite cool. But the strait was safe for the time, and he could now turn his attention to real business.
He used to start easy every morning on his natural history by digging out a few billions of dead moths that had snowed in his lights all night. Then he'd hurry ashore over his plank bridge and collect snails and fuzzy worms and similar crawlers by the tide mark. Later he'd work into heavier stuff—bats and leeches and centipedes and such like fascinating reptiles—or maybe dodge a panther or a wild pig or a boa constrictor in the jungle. Finally he'd taper off on ticks, which took to him most amazing, and fire ants and scorpions and mosquitoes as big as your finger. If there is one thing more evident than another in Borneo it's insects, and Andrew Harben did say he often swum home at dusk through solid waves of them. Taking that as meant, you can still see he would be by no means lonesome.
And pretty soon he had company of another kind too, being native. These were a tribe of simple Bugis that lived infrequent through the back country in a state of innocence you would hardly imagine, and they were very hairy and most friendly to Andrew Harben, which was queer. One family had a hang-out near the river, and it wasn't long before old Allo and his seven sons were serving him in all kinds of little ways. As soon as they understood his idea about animals and specimens they took a highly informing interest, Andrew Harben said.
They knew a good deal about natural history in their own way, and they gave him spiders and adders and things like that, very nice and all particular deadly. One day they took him into the jungle and introduced him to a caterpillar that drops off the trees on you so its hairs stick in your skin. Andrew Harben was swelled with pride at this invention. But that night the poison festered and he swelled in another manner. He had sense enough to lock himself in the shack so as to keep from jumping in the drink when the fever took him. Those caterpillars very near finished Andrew Harben, but he managed to keep the lights going and the Bugis came around to call next morning so kind and sympathetic. They were most neighborly, the Bugis.
"Ya—ya," they said, which was Dutch in a fashion and meant anything you like—such as buck up, old scout; the worst is yet to come.
They told him about a harmless snake that carried a superfluous or third eye in its back. He went hunting that curious snake and found it, but he didn't like the looks of its head. It had a broad head with a button on the neck that might or might not have been an eye. Of course he could not doubt when old Allo and all his seven sons assured him positively that the snake was safe as a tame kitten. But just for luck he grabbed it cautious and gave it a glass tube to chew on while he pressed the button.
"Ya—ya!" said the tribe—meaning who so surprised as them—and when Andrew Harben came to examine the tube he found enough venom to kill forty men, which was doing pretty well for one harmless little snake....
Yes, business was good, but pretty soon he had to worry about his wicks again. The socks were about used up, and socks never give a good light anyhow, Andrew Harben said. He'd been raveling off hispants for more splices until he blushed to look at himself. This was painful to his modesty but worse for his comfort, account of giving up so much protection. Every time he stripped off another inch of pant leg he opened up new territory for the insects which took to his bare limbs quite joyous.
Andrew Harben began to wonder where it would end and what he would do when he had no more pants to ravel. The way these lights burned up wicks was scandalous, and the tender wasn't due back for more than a week yet. He tried to get help from the Bugis, but he couldn't seem to make them understand. They didn't carry socks themselves, nor pants neither, nor much of anything but their long hair which they wore braided in a kind of club behind.
"Am I a scientist?" said Andrew Harben. "And can I not wrest the answer I need from nature herself?"
It cheered him up a lot to think of it that way. He remembered how other investigators had condescended to useful discoveries like imitation shoe buttons and synthetic doormats and Kennebunk sealskins.
"I will find a new material for lamp wicks," he said, "thus endearing myself to posterity as well as saving the lives of the merchant marine."
So he tested all manner of strange stuff in a most scientific manner, like coir and palm fibers and grapevines and corn silk. But it wasn't any use. He couldn't get anything that would sop up oil and hold a light for half a minute.
He was still cussing his luck and thinking hard things of science when the Allo family showed up with a piece of news that made him forget all the rest in a hurry. It seems they had located a flying frog in the depths of the jungle somewhere.
Now few people have ever seen the flying frog ofBorneo, and those who have are called nasty names by those who haven't. It wears a skin web between its fore and hind legs and is most rare. Andrew Harben was grateful because here he saw his big chance for fame. He would pickle the beast and write a book about it to make the university professors and the magazine writers sit up. And maybe if the statements were tough enough and somebody attacked him for a nature faker he might get the use of half a dozen new letters to the hind end of his name.
So he went out with the Allo tribe once again and they led him up a creek to the place where the flying frog lives. Sure enough there was a frog; he saw it quite clear. He only had to hop across on a log and take it in his little net. He hopped and the log turned under him, as was likely it would, being no log at all but a most monstrous great alligator. Andrew Harben went overboard, and the Bugis raised a yell.
"Ya—ya!" they said, meaning here's fun.
But Andrew Harben could dive as well as an alligator, which he did and got away downstream. This was the first time he could be thankful about his pants. They were now no bigger than a swimming suit, and he struck out with great speed and finally reached shore below with the loss of nothing but one shoe, which the alligator did not like.
Going back alone through the jungle, he lost his way and along toward evening what should he do but stumble plump on the whole nest of Allos where they lived. This was a place highly interesting to an investigator and would have been even more so to the little gunboats of different flags that police the sea. It was no hut but a proper palace, with a stockade and towers and flagpoles all complete and every blessed thing about it snaffled off some ship or other.
He saw strakes, beams, keelsons, masts, rigging, andcabin doors enough to build a fleet with; and the windows were ports and the chimneys all funnels. The women were cooking dinner in pots made of ship's bells turned upside, and they were dressed in yards and yards of Chinese silks all watered impromptu by sea water, and lace curtains from some captain's berth and various other flotsam while the little children toddled around in American flour bags. Yes, those Allos could wear plenty of garments when they were home, which was good manners, but more particular indicated they'd collected so much wealth they didn't know what else to do with it.
There were two great carven figureheads guarding the gate, and Andrew Harben even saw the name under one of them, a most calm and beautiful white face looking down on this rascal crew.Witch of Dundeeit said. And where was theWitch of Dundeenow, and where all the hearty men which sailed with her? Gone down in Macassar long since. Here were her bones, what was left, and for theirs the monkeys would be rolling them on the mud flats at low tide....
Well, Andrew Harben saw these things and he understood quick enough that the kindly Bugis were no more than wreck pirates who drove a rich trade whenever for any good and sufficient reason the light failed. They must have been at it for years, very quiet and cautious so the keepers would have plenty of time to go mad and get eaten by the crocodile, as the skipper said. Of course they would not kill the keepers in any uncrafty way lest the news should get out and spoil their graft, and a white man with a spear through him is hard to keep secret underground in any native country.
However, they would have made an exception of Andrew Harben. They spied him standing there in the dusk, and they knew their game was up unless they nailed him. They chased him hard through theswamps, but he gave them the slip and reached home a jump ahead. They were not anxious to follow while he could sweep the bridge with his fowling piece and so they stood on the shore and howled.
"Ya—ya!" they said, meaning damn him.
Andrew Harben was the angry man. He'd been pretty much fed up with natural history by this time. About everything that flew or crawled in Borneo had sampled him, and he was bit and stung all over. Meanwhile he considered the wickedness of these Bugis that had been carrying on serial murder here all unbeknownst and how nearly they had added him to the score by playing him for a scientist and a sucker. And he considered too that he was now shut off from all help in the matter of the lights and what a responsibility of life and property rested on him to keep them going.
"When I thought of that," he said, telling me, "—when I thought of that I jumped up and fired into the trees till the gun was too hot to hold. Curse 'em! D'you know I had to take what was left of my pants to patch up the wicks that night?"
He would have given all the honorary letters of the alphabet for the use of a rifle, but he might have saved his rage, for the Bugis minded bird shot not at all. They only danced in the mangroves and mocked him. "Ya—ya!" they said, which meant they'd get him yet....
He began to think so himself the next day when his water ran out. The tender was due in three more days. He thought his wicks might last that long, with nursing. But he would be dead a dozen times over with thirst.
After a blazing torture along toward evening he couldn't stand it any more. The woods were quiet and there was just a chance that the enemy were napping. He took a pail and sneaked ashore over hisbridge to the water barrel under the mangroves that they had always kept filled for him. It seemed they must have forgot to cut off supplies—the barrel was brimming. He drunk a pailful on the spot and started back with another,—and he got as far as his shack before he collapsed, all curled up in knots quite picturesque. Those simple Bugis had dosed the water with a native drug made from the klang berry.
Now, it is a singular thing about klang, as Andrew Harben told me, that it will mostly kill a brown man and seldom a white, but if it does not it sends him crazy. By that he meant crazy in the Malay way, which is quite different. The klang did not kill Andrew Harben. It laid him cold at first, and for many hours he lay without sense or speech.
When he came to be was stretched in a corner of the shack. The cupola overhead was dark and the shack was dark except for one tiny dish lamp on the floor, and around and about squatted the tribe of Allo having a high old time.
They were naked, being hopeful of a chance to swim before the night was done, and they smelt like swine. A big wind was raising in the Strait and the waves roared and bubbled underneath among the piles while the Bugis watched for results. By way of keeping their patience they were at the pickle bottles, being hindered not at all by the curious specimens therein and highly pleased with the alcohol. It is another singular thing that if klang was not made for a white man alcohol was never made for a brown.
Andrew Harben roused up in the corner where they'd chucked him, meaning to feed him to the usual alligator for breakfast. He saw them sitting there and celebrating so very joyful, and he saw something else. Through the smother off to windward toward Celebes he saw the twinkle of at least two ships standing offmost bewildered and marked for their graves among the reefs and currents they couldn't place. These ships were going down to his account because his lights were out. And meanwhile the Bugis were sitting around and tearing up the lantern wicks.
Yes, that was just what they were doing. They had took out the wicks so there should be no more light that night at any price. They had snaffled the poor little shreds that Andrew Harben had made at the expense of decency—his wicks, his precious wicks! They tossed the strands about, and the wind snatched them away inland into howling space, and the Bugis laughed.
"Ya—ya!" they said, which means good business.
Andrew Harben rose up all so quietly in his corner. Did I tell you he was a fine, big man? He was, and they were also eight fine, big men—old Allo and his seven sons. Before they noticed, he was able to reach his shotgun. It was empty, but he wanted nothing, only the barrels, which furnished a short and very hefty club. What happened after that nobody can say exactly. Which perhaps is just as well, for it could not have been a pretty thing to see. But Andrew Harben, who was crazed with klang, ran amuck among the Bugis, who were crazed with alcohol, and most queer were the doings in the lighthouse by Macassar. And when morning came there was no wreck in that strait.
"So you have not got mad," said the half-caste skipper when he climbed up to the shack in the smoky dawn two days ahead of time. Then Andrew Harben came out to meet him wearing few impediments to speak of and not much skin either; so he added: "Anyways, you have not been eats by z' crocodile."
"No," said Andrew Harben, all unashamed.
"Zatiss awright, but my God why did you not show your light till midnight?" asked the skipper. "I tellyou I was out zere last night and z' light wass dark and z' devil walking abroad on z' waters. Almost, almost we went ashore with zese dam currents. But just as we would run on z' Poi Laut reef you lit up again. Not one little minute too soon did you show z' light? Why iss zis?"
"I lost my wicks!" said Andrew Harben, quite cool.
"Loze z' wicks?" shouted the skipper. "For why have you lose z' wicks? Did you find zem again?"
"Come and see," said Andrew Harben.
He took the skipper into the shack where the lights in the cupola were still burning broad and yellow. They were eight in number, as I said, and no man ever saw the like of them before nor will again. For every light there hung a Bugis from the iron framework by the long hair of his head. One lock of his hair held him up. The rest was twisted into a cue and looped so that it floated in the oil tub and then passed through a burner.
By the hand of Andrew Harben that did it, those eight Bugis were the wicks of Macassar that kept the strait clear!
Meanwhile Andrew Harben went whistling about his work, climbing around the frame and trimming all so careful and moving the thumbscrews a bit here and there and ladling oil in a gourd to keep the flow rising well.
"I have made a remarkable discovery," he said. "It is a fact in nature that human hair can be used for a lamp wick. Of course you have to keep wetting it, for hair will not draw oil fast enough by capillary action. But it serves."...
The skipper looked at the Bugis and looked around at the broken pickle bottles and the scattered specimen cases and the other remnants, and the skipper understood partly, being a highly intelligent man for a half-caste.
"Zis," he said, "zisis mos' natural. Only it iss no good for 'istory. You will never write z' natural 'istory of your great discovery, my friend, because it is too dam natural for anybody to believe."
And he said true, and that's why I'm telling you the story free gratis as Andrew Harben told it to me, which you may write yourself if you got the nerve. Andrew Harben he'll tell you the same if you find him hammering rust by the Cape Town breakwater. He's all right now, but for a long time after they took him away from Borneo he was just a little peculiar one way. It wasn't bugs nor snakes nor natives nor any such vermin that excited him, though you might think so. No, he was cured of all that. But whenever he chanced to see a lamp anywhere that was carelessly tended, spattering or smoking and the flame burning low and foul, then Andrew Harben would begin to carry on.
"Ya—ya!" he would yell, meaning why the devil don't you trim your wicks?
Which, when you think of it, was no more than natural, as the skipper said.
I remembered the big chap with the China-blue eyes and the great mop of tangled fair hair. I had seen him one night, a month or so before, at Monte Carlo, where he wound up a run against the red by snapping the sovereigns off his cuff links. And here, in the Casino Pavao, at Funchal, I remarked him in almost the identical gesture. He fumbled through all his pockets before he found and tossed out upon the board a goldpiece, broad and ruddy as his own openair face. Now, as then, I saw him summon his last reserve for a final plunge. The coin fell onmanque, and there he let it lie.
We were in charge of a highly superior banker at that table—a model banker, a window model of a banker, with spade-cut beard, jet brows, waxen face, and perfectly faultless armor of full dress. Throughout the evening he had been spinning the wheel and shooting the little marble along its saucer rim with the detached regularity of an automaton. But when this strange token dropped shimmering beside him he stood like one transfixed, then bent over to stare, and presently passed a signal to the fat croupier across from him. And both of them stared at the thing, which shone like a full moon on the smooth green pool of the table.
I was not so sure of the rest. But it seemed to me that a sudden flame lighted their professionally indifferent eyes, that the spark of some swift excitement leaped between them. I say I could not be sure, because I was tiptoe with eagerness myself.
Nobody else was paying any noticeable attention tothe big gambler or to his fortunes. A silent crowd jostled stiffly about the board, three deep, unmindful of the heat, the puddled air, the aching blue-white lights—a cosmopolitan crowd, such as one finds in the season at a minor crossroads like Madeira, where types are varied, if not extreme.
There was the English invalid contingent, of course—the prop and frigid corrective of so many subtropical resorts; and the local social element, dark, dapper and Portuguese, playing a wary and penurious stake; and the casual commercial, chiefly Teuton, playing high and stolidly; and the whole hodgepodge of chance tourists from the steamers in port—South Americans, South Africans, lean and yellowish administrators from the West Coast, one or two frock-coated Arabs with the fez, Spaniards from Canary, and Hebraic gentlemen from the ends of the earth. In short, a Casino crowd, solely intent upon the game, and restrained from any common human sentiment like curiosity by its own multiplied strangeness.
And I rejoiced that this was so; for I desired no competition, and I meant to get that big gambler's big goldpiece, one way or another.
"Faites vos jou'!" The banker had recovered sufficiently to make his spin, droning with guttural accent the familiar phrase: "Faites vos jou', mess'h!"
I suppose every traveler likes to esteem himself rather a dab at collecting. How else account for the populations that live by the sale and the manufacture of assorted relics? I had lugged a bag of ancient coins half round the world, and I desperately wanted that particular coin, so large, so curious—and genuine—being offered as a bet. But there was something more to my temptation.
The day had been tinged for me with the charm and color of this Old World island town, lying like a flower wreath on a mailed breast, with its rioting gardens, itstwining streets, its grim basalt barriers and savage beaches. I felt the lure of authentic adventure in pursuing such a memento, a goldpiece possibly historic, stamped with the flourish of dead kings. One has the sense at times of spying from ambush upon a promise of emprise and some great gain. It is the glamour of things, a magic flush on dull and sordid fact. It starts up anyhow, at a face, a whisper, a strain of music—a stock quotation. True, in the present state of a fallen world it often proves counterfeit—and expensive, too often. But what of that? One follows still; if only for the sake of the story....
"Faites vos jou'!" advised the banker, who himself presided over romantic possibilities at a dollar a throw.
By the judicious use of an elbow I worked my way through the press. There fell the usual interval of suspense while the marble circled low. It gave me my chance to lean over the shoulder of the big gambler, who sat glowering and expectant, and to murmur in his ear.
"I'll take it up for ten pounds," I offered.
He nodded, without so much as looking at me; and I dropped five American eagles besides his stake....
"Rien ne va plus!"
But I had already effected my exchange; and I snatched away the big goldpiece just as the marble struck, hopped, and rattled into a socket.
"Vint e uno," announced the banker, surprised into his own native tongue; and I caught the unmistakable quiver of a live disappointment as his glance crossed mine with the flash of a knifeblade.
The gambler waited until a silver rake had swept away his eagles. With a visible effort, then, he braced himself against the table and rose. He turned to me, met my smirk of triumph with a frown, and plowed but of the throng to the natural refuge, the little barroom on the terrace side, where I followed him quite shamelessly.
The hour was early; we had the place to ourselves as we pledged each other in the quaint device they call a cocktail at the Pavao.
"You made a good bargain," he said, setting down his glass. "There must be at least twenty-five dollars' worth of pure gold in that slug if there's a penny—let alone its curio value."
His manner had a rough edge. Any one who has lost over the green cloth knows the spleen it can raise against all reason. I was the better pleased next instant when he broke through with a smile of sound good nature:
"Here's hoping it brings you better luck than mine."
I liked that smile, and the voice, easy and true as a bell, and the whole hearty, big-boned cast of him; and I marveled what twist had made a splendid great fellow like this, with his arching chest and walking-beam breadth of shoulder, the hanger-on at unhealthy gaming rooms. He was neither old nor young enough to be merely foolish. Forty would be about his age, I judged; but his eyes were new, like those of a child, and the only marks about them were the little sun crinkles of outdoor living.
"You were willing to sell," I reminded him with a half query.
"Of course!" he nodded. "When the game gets me running I'd stake my shoes if I could sell 'em. And ten pounds was more than the bank would have paid. All the same, you've got a rare piece, cheap."
"Just what have I got?"
"A doubloon—don't you know? One of those queer Portuguese cart wheels. Sink it! I made sure I'd found a lucky at last—anybody would."
I echoed that glorious old word:
"A doubloon?"
"Aye!" He smiled again. "Pieces of eight—what? The pirates used to cut throats for 'em."
On sudden impulse I risked a small experiment.
"I've no wish to profit by your misfortune," I said. "This is evidently very valuable.... Call the ten pounds a loan."
He glanced at the coin as I laid it before him; and then, with a widening of pupil, at me. I was startled to see him hesitate.
"No," he decided. "No. But look here, that's decent of you. I will say it's downright decent."
"Not at all," I protested virtuously. "It might be worth many times what I paid you."
"That wouldn't worry me."
But something was worrying him as he frowned down at the golden disk. I felt a trouble on the man that bit deeper than his losses. He had an odd, abrupt trick of passing a hand hard over his brow as if to brush away some constant irritation, a gesture at once naïve and passionate. At such times he looked about him with an uneasy air, puzzled and, I could almost say, resentful.
"You must be very much attached to the thing," I persisted.
He slid it back to me brusquely, with a jab of his forefinger.
"Thanks. Would you mind putting it out of sight?"
We were sitting at one of the small tables that lined the side of the little room. It so chanced that I sat facing the bar, which was not a proper bar at all but a long, low sideboard, whereon an attendant compounded drinks. My new friend was at my left and thus failed to see what now I saw—a detached head glaring out of the wall, sharp and definite as a cameo. I was slow to connect this singular phenomenon witha strip of mirror over the sideboard and regarded it merely with wonder, for the face was very much alive, convulsed and eager. Tardily, then, I recognized the jet spadebeard of the superior banker, and at the same moment felt a hot breath stirring in my back hair.
"Hello!" I exclaimed, and spun around in time further to recognize a pair of perfect coat tails; they were just disappearing through the doorway into thesallebehind me.
He could not have had ten seconds' start, but when I reached the doorway the fellow had vanished in a fringe of bystanders. Another banker, bald-headed and not in the least superior, was now in charge at roulette, and I noticed that the fat croupier had also been replaced.
I turned back to the attendant at the bar, a pop-eyed nondescript in a white jacket.
"Who was that?" I demanded indignantly. "Who is that man, and what the devil did he mean by blowing down the back of my neck?"
He stared at me, with fluttering lids, chalk-faced—I was to appreciate presently what terror rode that obscure soul.
"Não compriendo," he stammered, though I had heard him use good-enough English of a sort in wheedling for tips. Impatient at his stupidity and my own jumpy nerves, I flung away from him—or, rather, I started to fling and was halted there in my tracks....
Now the contact of a revolver is something that no man need be taught to identify. It is a part of instinctive knowledge. When a hard blunt nose snuggled suddenly under my lowest rib I required no verbal order to make me stand quite passive and obedient. So I did stand, while still mechanically resisting the furtive, tremulous fingers that came stealing round my wrist, trying to force my hand open.
I was not half so frightened as amazed, and certainly not half so frightened as the creature himself. I knew it must be the wretched little attendant who was tickling me with that revolver, and that he was trying to hold me up for something—what it might be I scarcely thought. If he had been respectable in any way through strength or skill or personality, I believe I might have yielded. But to be robbed by this miserable hireling, this pop-eyed dispenser of bad cocktails, himself in a state of the most abject funk, roused all the stubbornness of which I was capable. As if a sheep had assaulted me!
I suppose I should have allowed myself to be shot ingloriously had not the big gambler discovered what was going on. In two steps he was by me, pouched the weapon with a fist like a muff, and simply abolished Pop-eye....
"Easy now!" he warned him. "Don't yell!" It was an absurd anticlimax to see that bold, bad gunman being jammed upright to keep him from falling in a heap. "Reposo yourself, matey, if you know what's good. Be quiet—comprendo so much? Nobody's going to hurt you."